


The Midnight City Life

by Path



Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 16:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: Problem Sleuth has dragged himself back out of the grave, but does he have the heart to take up where he left off?
Relationships: Problem Sleuth/Spades Slick
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	The Midnight City Life

Your car finally gives up the gun on the bluffs above Midnight City. _Rest in pieces, old friend,_ you think, patting the smoking hood, and also, _Take that, you son of a bitch._

You give the tire a kick for good measure, and the entire thing wheezes and settles in a way cars shouldn't. It's not really a car anymore, just a pile of scrap waiting to be hauled away by some enterprising soul, left in a junkyard to stew for a few weeks, and finally melted down and remade into something else, maybe better, maybe worse. You sympathize, having just gotten through the last step yourself.

You stand on the bluffs over Midnight City, being something new, maybe better, maybe worse. The city twinkles below, a moving, glittering shape of streetlights and ribbons of theatre neon, sirens in red and blue, ads for insurance salesmen and pawn shops and little old ladies who read your palm for fifteen bucks, and headlights, from those people who still have cars.

It's good to see it again. It's terrible. You dragged yourself all the way back here, and the damn place isn't even pleased to see you. It hasn't noticed at all. 

As if Midnight City would notice the absence of one broke detective. Oh sure, your boys and your girl and maybe your regular customers, as regular as they got, anyhow, they must have noticed ( _they_ must _have noticed,_ comes a nasty, needy thought, you're not sure how that got in there), but the city herself? She just kept rolling.

You light up a smoke- your last one, the one you were saving for about two seconds ago, striking your last match on the hood of your pile of junk that used to be a car. You inhale deeply, oh yeah, and look at the match, shrug, and toss it over your shoulder through the broken windshield. You take a couple steps away, let your ragged coat billow a little exhaustedly in the evening wind, and stand there, a silhouette against the moving landscape of city lights. Or against the burning wreck of your car, depending on which way you look.

You look back to judge the effect. Your car hasn't changed, and when you check, the match has sputtered on the sand-pitted seat, too tired to even immolate right. You don't sympathize with the damn car anymore. You thought the two of you had something special, when it came to burning to death like honest men.

You sigh, and sit on the hood, which creaks ominously under your weight, and you smoke your last butt, look at the city, and weigh going back.

It wasn't really an option for awhile, in that there was nowhere else to go, but now that you're actually almost there you're starting to have your doubts. It's a young man's game out there, and you're not playing it as well as you used to. Time was you could take a couple shanks and a bullet or two and keep on crawling, but after this last one, you know, you're not really feeling it. Maybe there's still some hole you could go die in, the kind of thing you'd expect from the sort of respectable fellow you are. 

But no, though this last one was a doozy, you've never been one to know when to really quit. You might as well go on down and see if your landlady held onto your things for you, or if the guys have a couch you can crash on while you hack a life back together. Maybe, you think with sudden hope, they're only just having the funeral, and you could stagger back in during the eulogies and give your own. Chance like that doesn't come up every time you vanish suddenly in the night.

But you're also worried maybe nobody threw one.

It's musing on the complications of standing over your own open, hopefully empty grave that you notice the guys digging one not so far off. You'd been so preoccupied with your own thoughts they could have snuck right up on you, but they're busy with their own thing, or maybe your trenchcoat is so grey with soot and sand by now that you blend right into the night. Either way, never knowing what's good for you, you saunter over.

You get just far enough to realize what a shitty idea that is when one notices you coming and whips out the six of diamonds. You can't see the card properly, but you know what a tommy gun looks like. In the distant light of Midnight City, a pair of steely eyes narrow over the muzzle. "Thought you were dead," says Diamonds Droog.

You shrug. "Rumours of my death, etcetera," you reply.

"I know how to put those to bed," he says, adjusting his aim without blinking, but before he can go through with it, an overly friendly hand slaps him on the back. Even Diamonds Droog winces from the impact of the metal on his shoulder. 

"Well Jesus H. Christ, boys, it's Problem Sleuth. Haven't seen your nose in our business for awhile," says Spades Slick.

"Yeah, well," you say, "nearly got it chopped off last time. Figured it needed a break."

"Yeah, well," he replies, taking up the same cold stare as his buddy, "you know what else could use a break?" He cracks one set of knuckles. He repeats the gesture on the other side, but the steel doesn't give.

Your eyes flicker to Boxcars in the back, halfway in a shallow grave and shovelling, and Deuce, perched on some dead guy's chest. Time was, you'd push this a little, figure out who that was. Not a gangster, you'd bet your hat, they just use those for escalation, dump 'em back on their boss' doorstep. If the Midnight Crew gotta be circumspect about getting rid of the body, it's probably one that matters.

But time was, you'd get gutted for your efforts. It grates a little, not to try. But you're learning. You nod affably to Spades and Diamonds and keep on walking. "Nothing here," you say. "I'm flat broke already." 

In one of his signature whiplash changes of mood, Spades Slick lets out a vicious laugh. "Ha! You hear that, Hearts? Can't break the guy. Already broke!" 

Hearts Boxcars keeps shovelling, and you keep walking. After a moment, Slick catches up and falls into step with you. "You know, maybe I missed you after all," he says, plucking a knife from his coat and idly flipping it. "Nobody got a sense of goddamn humour around here."

"'Maybe'?" you ask, mildly offended.

"Well, y'know how it is. You think you know a guy. You get a drink or two, you get _the pleasure of his acquaintance,_ " he smirks, sharp teeth bright in the night, "you start to get a bit attached, he fucks on out of your life and you never see him again. Same old story."

A pulse of heat flares at your temple. For a second you think he nicked you, but no, this is just something you haven't felt in awhile, in weeks or months or however long it's been. You've been angry, a cool and waiting anger tired of the way things are and ready to switch it up, but you'd forgotten what it's like to talk to Spades Slick. It's absolutely fucking infuriating.

"Y'know, that's funny," you say, turning on him like you haven't learned a goddamn lesson in your life, "from over here it seems like, you think you know a guy. You get _the pleasure of his acquaintance_. You start to get a bit attached, he stabs you in the gut and leaves you for dead on the street."

Slick scoffs. "As if one shank ever did you in. You got scared off and you only just now had the guts to come creeping around again now that you think you can make some money off it all." He jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the impromptu grave, a gesture that could put a man's eye out. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you double down on your guess that that body was an important one.

"Yeah, _one shank_! Can you believe it? Who'd expect a guy to wipe it from that?" you ask. Your voice is rising and you can't stop the sarcasm. You rifle through your battered hat and retrieve the switchblade, tossing the card at Slick's feet. A couple spades are still visible above the sand where it's embedded itself, like it did into your chest a couple weeks or months ago, or whatever. "As if it was one knife. As if it was ever one damn knife. How many of these fucking things have you stuck me with, and I kept coming back for more?"

"Couldn't get enough of the _other_ thing I stuck you with," Slick sneers. "Well, don't worry about that. I've got better things to do than waste my time on some deadbeat detec-"

"A waste of time, huh? You couldn't wait to shove me in a coffin and kick it off the pier," you snarl. "I bet you moved on to one of your groupies, one of your _floozies_ before the fucking night was out. Did you have a fun time? Celebrate the end of an era?"

"You want your era ended, buddy, I am _more_ than happy to oblige y-"

"-just pissed I got back up again-"

"-never met anyone more in need of an asskicking-"

You are no longer sure what you're saying. Your head is blazing hot and the words pour out of you in a perfect flurry of vicious, exacted hate. For a moment you feel as if you're observing it from above, two idiots screaming at each other in the desert in the night. _Oh dagnabbit,_ you think. _This is just like the old days._

That's all you get in before Slick shuts you up with a metal fist to the gut. You double over, not yet over your recent ordeals, but he grabs you by the collar and hauls you back up. You try to muster a defense, but he just twists his fists in your coat and mashes your face into his, and suddenly you've got all your work cut out for you managing thin lips and sharp teeth and hot tongue all up in your business. The anger doesn't dissipate so much as coalesce; your head is on fire with rage and betrayal and your body is on fire with want, you're burning up inside and you pour it all straight back on Spades Slick, jamming your bodies and your mouths together.

After a long hot minute, he shoves you away and coughs. "Jesus, you taste like crap. You been _eating_ cigarettes?"

"More or less," you agree, breathless. He hands you a flask from his back pocket and you take a swig of something that feels like it scours the desert straight out of your mouth and throat and stomach, and replaces it with more burning. 

He kisses you again, or rather, the two of you engage in sort of a shoving match in mouth form, not recognizably kissing by most metrics. His hands are all over you, tugging and shoving and grasping, one hot and one steel-cold. It's good like a gulp of Slick's garbage gin burning its way through your body. 

When you break with the mutual, unspoken understanding that you're not gonna jerk each other off in the goddamn desert, he knocks his forehead against yours, both your hats tipping back. "Where you been?" he mutters, that mood swing taking him around into melancholy.

You sigh deeply, still catching your breath. "Well, after you left me in the gutter- no hard feelings, tempers were running high all around- a Felt crew ambled by and had some fun with me. Threw me around a bit, you know how it is. Itchy just kicks real fast, goes through a lot of ribs in quick order. I could've got through that okay, or... you know, more or less, but somebody else came by after. Threw me in the trunk for a bit, drove out in the desert and set the thing on fire."

Slick shoves you away a bit, eyes narrowing. "Who?"

"Who knows?" you shrug. "Coupla cars came out. Not green, not black, could be anyone."

"Some problem sleuth you are," he grouses.

You roll your eyes. "I was lucky they left me my hat. Still had a half-juiced fire extinguisher in there from the art gallery fiasco and nobody bothered to take the switchblade outta my chest, so I cut the ropes and jimmied the lock and put out the car, and then I laid down in the back and tried not to die for a bit. Car wasn't great, what with the fire and all, didn't exactly give me a quick drive home, and since there's no goddamn roads it took me forever to figure out how to get home. But here I am."

"Here y'are," he says, and then, as if making up for earlier sentiment, "Don't lookit me like that, I ain't giving you a ride back."

"Yeah, yeah. I know," you say, and suddenly you do, you know with perfect resignation how things are going to work. You're going to walk into town and wheedle yourself a place to stay and some clients, you're going to rustle the boys back into some semblence of order and find a way to make it up to your girl, you're going to get the shit kicked out of you by the Midnight Crew and the Felt and who knows what other players. You're going to hit up a joint some night for information and run into Spades Slick and you're going to have a drink, five drinks, you're going to argue and fight and fuck and pull yourself back together in the afternoon to creep home and get ready to do it all the next night. You don't know why you thought it was avoidable. That's just the Midnight City life.

A weight comes off your chest. You nod to Slick, tell him you'll see him around, shove your hands in the pockets of your beat-up trenchcoat, and you start to walk for town. Spades Slick yells something after you, but you're not paying attention anymore. You figure you might as well get started now. You're just going to have to walk back out here in the morning. You don't know who tried to off you before, but it wasn't the ordinary suspects. Might as well start with the only leads you got: a desert grave for a body too important for the Midnight Crew to use, and a hunk of junk with a burned-out license plate.

Serenely, you saunter towards the glowing mass of moving light that is Midnight City after dark. You're not something new, better or worse; you're still just you, keeping on keeping on. Just like the old days. Nothing's changed, but that's just the way things are in this town. She doesn't treat you any different, and maybe that's how Midnight City shows she cares.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time.


End file.
